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After a while the stars formed in an open star cluster drift apart, probably pulled by the attraction of passing stars. Let's focus down on one star and see how it works.
A star (such as the Sun) is a ball of gas which has, at its heart, a nuclear fusion reactor. It is important to know something about how stars work, for several reasons.
- One star, the Sun, is the source of almost all the energy used by living things, including humans. We could not survive without it.
- If we could copy the Sun in a small and controlled way, we believe we could obtain a great deal of energy on Earth without creating a lot of pollution.
- Stars are the places where large atoms are built. Past generations of stars formed the gas and dust from which the planets and life were made.
So stars play a key part in our story.
For information on the nearest star to us, click here.
For the meaning of the word magnitude, click here.
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